States Have Skills Standards For Over 60 Jobs, Survey Finds

States have developed skills standards for what workers should know
and be able to do for more than 60 occupations, ranging from store
manager to electrician, according to an unpublished survey by the
National Association of State Directors of Vocational Technical
Education.

The survey suggests that any attempt to develop voluntary skills
standards nationally will have to take into account a large variety of
pre-existing efforts.

Congress is expected to resume debate about creating a national
skills-standards board later this month. (See Education Week, June 2,
1993.)

"There's a wealth of information and experience--and a wealth of
working relationships--that need to be learned about and probably
respected,'' said Madeleine B. Hemmings, the group's executive
director.

"One of my concerns is that nobody seems terribly interested in
looking at what's been done,'' she added, "and it really needs to be
built on, rather than stepped over.''

Skills standards outline the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed
by workers in a particular field. According to the survey, most states
began to develop such standards in collaboration with business and
industry to make their vocational-education programs more relevant.

Almost all states used skills standards to help develop
vocational-education curricula, the survey found, while 29 used them to
develop criteria for assessing student mastery.

The majority of states also used such standards to help craft
articulation agreements between secondary and postsecondary
institutions that provide technical training.

The biggest impetus for state skills-standards efforts came from the
Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1984. The act requires
states to establish technical committees, including representatives of
business and industry, to set benchmarks for specific occupational
clusters.

Since the act was passed, the study found, nearly 700 such
committees have been formed at the state and local levels.

Reliance on Consortia

Because the process of developing skills standards can be
costly--Florida spent $289,000 to establish standards for a cluster of
health occupations--many states have joined consortia to draft such
standards.

The most prominent is the Vocational-Technical Education Consortium
of States, or V-TECS, which now has 26 states. The consortium, which
has developed skills standards for some 110 occupations, provides a
common format for states and a bank of criterion-referenced test
items.

Barbara Border, the author of the study, said consortia are likely
to become more common as states expand their skills-setting
efforts.

States have developed skills standards for 61 occupations, the study
indicates, in the fields of agriculture, business, marketing, health,
trade and technical activities, personal services, and home
economics.

But Ms. Border found that within a given occupation, no one set of
skills standards was being used by every state.

"It behooves us to have one set of standards across the nation,''
she argued, "rather than 26 or 30 sets of these things across the
United States that might be somewhat different.''

Fewer than half the states have developed and validated test items
at the state level to assess how well students meet the skills
standards. Most evaluation is tied directly to instruction and left in
the hands of individual school districts or postsecondary
institutions.

The study found that secondary schools in 42 states, postsecondary
institutions in 38 states, business partnerships and apprenticeship
programs in 27 states, and Job Training Partnership Act programs in 32
states used the skills standards.

A key concern about national skills standards has been whether they
would be a barrier to employment for women and minorities.

The new survey found that states addressed equity issues in a
variety of ways. At least 37 states were examining their skills
standards for gender bias, while 12 directly involved their sex-equity
coordinators in the development of skills standards and curricula.

Five states designed individualized education plans for students
with special needs to help them complete occupational-skills
training.

Notice: We recently upgraded our comments. (Learn more here.) If you are logged in as a subscriber or registered user and already have a Display Name on edweek.org, you can post comments. If you do not already have a Display Name, please create one here.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.